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That is a really good question that usually has a pretty long and complicated answer. I'll do my best to explain it as well as I can though.

I'll go over the Anthem first, since it was designed first.

The Anthem-
The Anthem system utilizes our Element undersaddle pickup and our patented Tru-Mic microphone. The Tru-Mic is a noise-cancelling microphone that is designed to drastically cut down on the "boxy" reflections that occur inside of a guitar body. This makes the microphone much less prone to encountering feedback, as well as making it sound more like an external mic. The preamp in the Anthem has a special crossover circuit that allows the mic to carry the majority of the signal, giving you a very natural and "acoustic" tone. The Element pickup will only carry the low end (250Hz and below), while the mic carries the rest of the signal (250Hz and above). This allows the pickup and the mic to do what they do best; the pickup has low-end "punch", but doesn't carry any of the "quacky" mid-range that many Piezo pickups have, and the mic doesn't carry any of the feedback prone low-end.

On the full version of the Anthem, you can blend the pickup in even further to carry the entire frequency range, if you want. This is primarily for players who like to get a more snappy or punchy response from the pickup.

The Anthem SL (stream line) has a preset blend of mic and pickup, where the mic always carries the majority of the signal. I've used my full Anthem for a few years now, and the tone is excellent. I prefer the tone of the mic side of the blend (SL Setting), so I usually leave it set there for all of my live playing. I recently installed an SL in another of my guitars, and it is equally amazing but with a smaller price tag

The Lyric-
The Lyric uses the same idea behind the Tru-Mic technology and takes it even further. Due to some very advanced and proprietary circuitry that we have now patented, our engineers were able to get rid of the pickup entirely, allowing the mic to carry the full frequency range at much higher playing volumes than other standalone mics. Since the Lyric does not have a pickup, the entire system sounds very much like a studio condenser mic in a studio setting. Compared to an undersaddle pickup, the Lyric is not quite as feedback resistant, but it can get pretty close. Something like the Venue DI (with extra EQ and notch filtering) can make the Lyric even more resistant to feedback issues in louder situations.

The pickup in the Anthem is really the main difference between these two systems (tonally). It adds a little more low-end "punch" to the Anthem signal that isn't necessarily natural, but is definitely helpful in some louder band situations.

I know that this is a lot of information. So if you or anyone else have questions, just let me know.